


Love Like You

by AwkwardSquiid



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Character Study, F/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Songfic, abstract writing, everyone else is mentioned - Freeform, everything i do is sad, help me please, i love torturing characters, i was up till 2 finishing this, mmmm i love betrayal, stream-of-consciousness, this is an abstract songfic so its. uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 19:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16248671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardSquiid/pseuds/AwkwardSquiid
Summary: Captain Quinn didn't believe in luck; he was a logical person. Logic and luck coincided, they were opposites, they contradicted each other constantly.However there was something about this situation that was incredibly, astronomically lucky.But eventually all luck turns sour.





	Love Like You

**Author's Note:**

> okay so HEY i wrote this last night in like a total haze so here ya go. a little bit of quinn/warrior to remind us that w o w that story was so good.  
> the song is Love Like You by Rebecca Sugar, though some of you might know it better as the credit song for Steven Universe. and yes. i cry when i listen to that song.
> 
> this is trash and i apologize but the impulse to post is stronger than my self-hatred

 

 _If I could begin to be_  
  
_Half of what you think of me_

_I could do about anything_

_I could even learn how to love_

 

She stole his breath away.

Eyes bluer than the sky and a smile that made his heart pound, a presence so powerful yet calming it took him by storm. She gave him a look that made him drop a thousand feet into the earth and yet rose him back up from dust to see eye-to-eye, equals in a swirling nebula, the war fading away like the softest whispers of night.

Everything was suddenly unimportant, even though the voice in his head, his Order, screamed at him that this was wrong. Thousands of millions of miles apart, they were, with the chances of them even speaking so astronomically low it shouldn’t have even happened today.

No person should have looked at him like that, not of her rank. They were galaxies apart, destined to meet this one time and never again. It was a fleeting, passing thing, something fated but hopeless and something dead before it could live. The death of it crushed him like the air being squeezed out of his lungs the second she’d walked into his office.

Fate was cruel and he knew he’d do anything to see her again.

Fate was unfair, but she was his mistress.

But so was the woman who looked at him like he was _everything_ _,_ and he’d lain down his cards and waited for the hand to be drawn to determine which he would follow.

 

_When I see the way you act_

_Wondering when I’m coming back_

_I could do about anything_

_I could even learn how to love_

 

Today she’d smiled at him.

There was blood on her face and her hair stuck to her neck from sweat, but somehow everything and all of her was beautiful and serene, something so vastly different from their desolate surroundings, that it seemed as if she simply shouldn’t exist. Somehow he’d gotten himself into this mess, and everything in him screamed that it was just the _right thing to do,_ that it was _protocol_ and it was _polite_ but he knew that it wasn’t just that. It was so much _more_. It was an everything that should have stayed a nothing back on Balmorra.

It should have died there but he’d followed her. He’d slipped out of the fate’s hands and left for the stars after the woman and the slave and he knew that he’d fallen too far to back out now. There was no turning back. There never was.

Of course he’d followed her. He had nowhere else to go.

And somehow despite himself, despite everything, she treated him like an actual _person_ . To Baras he’d been nothing but a tool, a useless means to an end that owed him. And perhaps that was all he was, a pawn in a greater battle, but _damn it all_ if he couldn’t be the best pawn that ever lived.

 

_Love like you_

 

Today, he’d smiled at her.

He was so cold, so calculating, seeming to only speak to her when he had a report to make or a file to issue. But she knew beyond anything that there was _more_ going on that he never spoke of, a silent conversation in his head, his eyes that always analyzed everything noticing more details than he ever let on. Baras had no right to this man. He was worth more.

So much more.

 

_I always thought I might be bad_

_Now I’m sure that it’s true_

 

_“You’re not developing feelings for her, are you?”_

No, _no_ , he wasn’t, he couldn’t be. His master’s chilly voice rang in his ears, and the more times it echoed the more fear bubbled in his stomach, like a disease threatening to kill him if he didn’t cure it. Everything in him knew that couldn’t be it, could _never_ be it. They were on the same ship yet they were worlds apart, separated by a thin veil that had a name and a face and long, long history with both of them.

Perhaps in a different life. Down a different timeline. Perhaps a reality in which he’d been a fellow Sith, a puppet master rather than the puppet. Perhaps a world in which he was the orchestrator and the Empire was his orchestra. Not here, where he was destined to die. War took everyone. It had taken from him before and it would not hesitate to take again even if it finally stole the very breath from his lungs.

He _had_ feelings for her (of course he did, he’d be a fool not to), but it was up to him what to make of them.

And who to tell.

“No, sir,” had been his response, cold and clipped, and his mind screamed _liar_ at him, like it did every time that he communicated with Baras behind her back. He was a liar and he didn’t deserve her, but his Master couldn’t take everything from him yet. Not her. He would never take her from him even if the day came in which he tried.

Baras thought himself Malavai Quinn’s god, but he was wrong.

 

_Cause I think you’re so good_

_And I’m nothing like you_

 

He would never forget Alderaan.

It was like Balmorra, in a lovely, twisted sense. Wartorn and a bloody disaster, but so, _so_ beautiful. How one planet, so stricken with death, could look so stunningly gorgeous, he would never know. He hoped to see it again. He hoped that someday, when all the fighting was over, he could come back her and gaze at the mountains and sit by one of the crystal-clear lakes they’d stopped at once or twice.

If he thought about it hard enough, he almost felt an arm entwined with his at that beautiful scene, the vague imagination of a face materializing in his mind, smiling at him in the perfect sunlight; a forlorn, taboo thought that he barely dared to explore.

She’d trusted him to come along on this mission. It had been one of their most dangerous outings yet. But every time something went wrong or some high-and-mighty noble ambushed them for a lowly outcome she looked to him and they knew instantly what to do.

It had been a bare few months that he’d joined her. But they’d been months full of experiences Quinn was sure he would never, ever have again, all by the side of the woman who’d made him abandon a stable, solid job on Dromund Kaas to join her in the stars.

The words were poetic, and perhaps with a deeper meaning, though he didn’t dare wonder what they were.

He’d follow her anywhere. He’d followed her underneath this cursed, beautiful planet and back out again, he’d watched her single-handedly take down a battalion and wonder _how_ he’d been so lucky to be at the right time, on the right stupid swamp of a planet.

His years on Balmorra had finally paid off.

 

_Look at you go_

_I just adore you_

 

Sometimes she wished he’d just _talk_ to her.

She’d been dropping so many hints to the point where it was getting exhausting. But she held out a faint hope that perhaps he was avoiding it for good reason. God, he was probably doing what _she_ should have been. The thrill of this new life, unleashed and at the whim of the universe, had an effect on her unlike any she’d ever felt.

Freedom. _Freedom_ was the cause and the effect, and she felt loose and wild, able to take on the world and simultaneously crush it below a boot if she felt like it. Save innocents one day, conquer the world the next. She was hardly a perfect Sith.

But perhaps he was the perfect Imperial. He definitely seemed like it.

She sometimes caught him watching her. He was quite subtle about it, so it didn’t happen that often. But when it did, she got a childish sense of _ah, so he_ does _notice me,_ no matter how completely unprofessional it sounded and how mortified he might be if he found out that she knew.

He was a genius with an eye for details and she admired that. She wasn’t naive, she knew that there was a debt owed between him and her master that reigned far more power over him than their mere friendship, but something in her wanted to trust that man, and she _did_ , despite the fact it seemed almost hopeless.

Sometimes she liked to lie awake and imagine that her lord didn’t exist and Captain Quinn’s bottled-up emotions might be more readily accessed.

In a perfect world, maybe...  


_I wish that I knew_

_What makes you think_

_I’m so special_

 

The bridge was where Quinn liked to be. He was often there, staring off into the stars when he should have been plotting their next course, instead gazing off like he hadn’t a care in the world, when in reality, he had _all_ the cares the world threw at him, and then some.

She often came to him there, and she _liked_ to use the excuse of a status report, but they both knew better than that. He didn’t quite understand it, but he didn't mind it- his lord sometimes simply stopped in to _talk_ , for whatever reason that could possibly be. Certainly she viewed their relationship as strictly professional. It _couldn’t_ be anything else.

 _Could_ it?

By all rights, her interest in him should have been unfounded. She had plenty of other people to talk to on the ship- the Twi’lek, her padawan, the pureblood. But somehow she was drawn to his quarters or the bridge like a bogwing to a flame, just as he had been drawn to her that fateful day that she arrived in his office.

Such thinking was unprecedented, he scolded himself. There was no possible way in this reality, in their situation, that the rising star quickly-succeeding Sith lord he was underneath would have any unprofessional feelings for him. It was one-sided. It _had_ to be one-sided, or Quinn was quite afraid he might lose his mind.

Perhaps in another reality.

But by the stars, not _this_ one.

What did she see in him?

 

_If I-_

 

 

Everything was over.

He’d known this day would come eventually.

Oh, he’d known ever since they’d first met. He’d known ever since Baras had betrayed her and left her to die. It had been a steady progression of fate and he had _known_ it was coming.  The timing, however, was impeccably _horrible_ , as it usually was with him.

As it turned out, she did, in fact, have very unprofessional feelings for him. And those unprofessional feelings had turned into...something. He knew what it was. He wasn’t a fool. He’d seen the way she looked at him on the bridge, face to the stars and eyes shining like mischievous orbs, her words licking like fire at his heart.

It wasn’t one-sided. It was unprofessional, reckless, dangerous.

But he was a liar if he said he didn’t love her back.

For such a long time, months, even, he thought perhaps it would end well. Maybe their problems would cease and they could explore the idea of a _relationship_ together. It had sounded ridiculous at the time, but had gradually developed into reality.

Until he got that call.

Until, at last, Baras _finally_ let Quinn pay of his debt.

“Let” was far from the correct word, in retrospect. Suddenly his heart was thrown onto a pair of golden scales and his mind was stolen away from him; it was life or death, and he was a resourceful man. He weighed out his options and analyzed results and outcomes. He knew when there was no way to escape something.

He knew in his heart and in his head that this was the last, final option, that there was no escaping his cut and dried fate, but _damn him to hell if it didn’t hurt._

Powerless to stand against his master, Quinn paid the dear price by standing against the only other person left to fight.

The person he’d been ordered to kill. The person who had him starstruck in his lonely office, who he’d shared so many tender moments with, who he’d learned to love and who had taught him to learn to live. The Sith who defied odds. His beacon of hope.

It was wrong.

Of _course_ it was wrong. But, for him, in moments of peril, logic outweighed love. In that moment, logic won. Not for the first time, not for the last. Everything in him cried out for him to stop, but his mind, his one-track thrice-cursed decision maker of a mind _refused_ to back down.

Baras had said it over the transmission.

_You do have the cold heart of a Sith, deep down, don’t you?_

That was the crux of the problem.

 _She_ didn’t.

But _he_ did.

 

_If I could..._

 

Regret.

It was a powerful emotion.

Raw. Hungry. Consuming. It tore him apart. His mind was not his own any longer. Voices were in his nightmares, a fist was wrapped around his throat, pain that had no business being there struck his forehead like the punishing blow of fate cuffing him for his heresy like a child’s punishment.

He’d regretted it. Of _course_ he had. And he hadn’t even succeeded. He’d been close- horrifyingly, terribly close- but he hadn’t succeeded. She had stared him down and refused to budge, her stance saying _come and fight me_ but her eyes pleading _no_ , softly begging him to stop, everything on her face saying _die_ and everything in her tone crying _please don’t._

Why hadn’t she killed him?

He had deserved it. He _wished_ she had. Perhaps then he wouldn’t suffer under the wary looks she gave him in the dark corridors of the ship, the way her hands no longer lingered on his when he healed her wounds, the slight flinch she gave whenever he made sudden movements.

For a moment, he had held all the stars in his hands and had everything.

Just like that, he lost it all.

Quinn’s mind hadn’t been his own, but he didn’t blame that. He entirely, completely blamed himself- where else was it to go? It _had_ been him, whether he accepted it or not. He was never one to cast his sins on another. It was dishonorable in every sense of the word.

But now, he was the very _definition_ of dishonorable.

Perhaps he could make it up to her. Perhaps, though she’d forgiven him, he could try and salvage what they’d had.

It was wishful thinking, wasn’t it?

 

_...Begin to do_

_Something that does right by you_

_I would do about anything_

_I would even learn how to love_

 

_Please be alive._

He hadn’t known true, utter fear until this day. Until the day where her lone pod had crashed on the toxic planet, the complete, soul-sucking, gut-wrenching terror that struck him like a blow to the face when he realized that _she might be dead and he might not be in time to get her out of there._

_Please, please, please be alive._

He shoved himself through the mess of wires, not caring about the sharp electrical sting that the sparks of the loose wires left on his skin. He practically tore apart the very metal of the wrecked shuttle, shoving himself through and searching somewhere, _anywhere_ for her.

_There._

A flash of color, the telltale sign of one of her hands clenched onto a loose metal piece as if even in her subconscious she was holding onto life. Partially submerged in the toxic waters, he heard her ragged, shallow breaths as a large stream of blood poured from her forehead.

Quinn waded through the water, body heaving like a madman, his eyes blurry with tears but his heart set on reaching her and nothing else. He scooped her up in his arms and clung to her like he’d never let go, wrapping himself around her and realizing that this was the closest they’d been in proximity since the Incident.

She was still breathing and that was what mattered.

There was no master, no barrier of reality nor space-time that could stop him from doing this _here_ and _now._

She was going to survive.

She _had_ to survive.

 

_When I see_

_The way you look_

_Shaken by how long it took_

_I would do about anything_

 

 

Her eyes opened.

His hands shook violently as he practically cried with relief, kneeling pallid-faced on the toxic shores of Quesh that he’d dragged her onto only moments ago. His shaky hands combed her matted hair out of his face as the toxin vaccine surged through both of their bloodstreams, the telltale syringes lying by their feet, blood mixing with mud as the green waves lapped against the shore.

Covered in muck and swamp water, the pair looked more like a pile of debris than a broken Imperial officer and a Sith lord. But neither cared, and all the other worried about was the other’s pulse and the fact they were breathing.

“You’re alive,” she murmured.

“I am,” he whispered back, voice thick with emotion. “So are you.”

She struggled to sit up, and the rational side of his brain wanted to tell her to lie back down, to wait for their help to arrive, but instead he reached down and helped her up, drawing her into his arms and wrapping them around her. She hugged him back, face buried in his wet, mud-and-blood streaked uniform, and held on as if she would never let go.

And in that moment, no betrayal or mistrust would pull them apart.

Ever again.

 

_I would even learn how to love_

_Like you_


End file.
